Date of Award

Summer 8-16-2024

Level of Access Assigned by Author

Open-Access Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

History

Advisor

Mary T. Freeman

Second Committee Member

Liam Riordan

Third Committee Member

Michael Lang

Abstract

In the late eighteenth century, free African American churchgoers in the Northeast began to fight back against the mistreatment they had received in majority-white churches – treatment they felt was not only unacceptable, but un-Christian. Unwilling to be forced to sit in balconies or provided too few pews in the farthest reaches, given communion last, and subjected to other racist abuses, they struck out on their own and formed separate Black churches. These separate churches were an expression of Black collective identity. The movement grew throughout the nineteenth century, as churches were founded throughout New England.

One such congregation, the Abyssinian Congregational Church, was founded by members of Portland, Maine’s African American community, who began worshipping together in 1830. The congregation dissolved in 1917, but its meeting house is now the third oldest still standing Black church building in the United States. In addition, the minutes of the Abyssinian Church and Religious Society have been preserved.

This thesis argues that Black churches in northern New England, such as the Abyssinian Congregational Church in Portland, Maine, must be included in studies of nineteenth-century independent African American churches. Mid-nineteenth century Maine, while geographically isolated relative to the larger cities in the Northeast, presented a distinctive set of opportunities that attracted several members of a network of Black activist ministers to Portland. Reverend Amos Noë Freeman, pastor of the Abyssinian during critical years of the church’s growth in the 1840s, linked Black Calvinist churches in the Mid-Atlantic with those in both southern and northern New England. His career traced the connections within this network of African American activist ministers, and the churches they served, in a distinctive manner.

Through an examination of the records of the Abyssinian Church and Religious Society, this thesis demonstrates the ways in which, under Freeman’s leadership, the congregation entwined their religious beliefs with social and political action for the liberation and advancement of African American people, and asserted their place in the wider Portland community. Through analysis of the minutes of Black Calvinist conventions and of the scrapbooks of Reverend Amos Beman, this thesis demonstrates the lifelong professional and personal connections that linked this network of African American ministers, many of whom trained together at the Oneida Institute near Utica, New York.

Histories of separate Black churches and of African American ministers have almost completely overlooked both the Abyssinian Church and their first full-time minister, the Rev. Amos Noë Freeman. This thesis demonstrates the importance of the Abyssinian Church and Rev. Freeman to the understanding of the interconnected nature of independent Black churches in New England and the Mid-Atlantic.

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